Chapter 696 - 685: Are There Still Survivors in the Archipelago?
Chapter 696: Chapter 685: Are There Still Survivors in the Archipelago?
"Hey, Ke, you’re recovering pretty fast!" Gray casually greeted his partner, who had been lying down for just a week, "Why are you wearing so much?"
"It’s too cold. My demon pattern doesn’t have your burning ability." Ke instinctively tightened his collar.
He wrapped himself tightly to prevent the mycelium that had already spread to his limbs from being exposed.
Fortunately, he hadn’t been parasitized for long, the mycelium hadn’t crawled to his face yet, otherwise, it would be impossible to hide.
During this time, he frantically collected intelligence related to mycelium parasitism.
However, the results disappointed him.
These parasitic mycelia were completely different from all known parasitic methods, and they appeared so recently that the Empire didn’t have time to study countermeasures.
Theoretically feasible methods, such as resurrection, demon race’s body reshaping, or the effects of certain divine artifacts.
None of these were accessible to Ke.
The easiest condition, body reshaping, required another demon race at least palace level voluntarily refining their demon core into a tool to reshape the body.
At the end of his rope, a voice offered him another choice...
After small talk, Ke and Gray continued their work of eliminating traitors within the city.
The abandoned alley was destroyed, but the traitors who scattered spores hadn’t been completely captured, and things worsened instead.
The City Lord even had to allocate some personnel back to specifically search and clear the mycelium inside the city, making the work of removing mycelium outside even tougher.
After the abandoned alley incident, Gray now felt every parasitized person had a problem.
He knew this was wrong, but his mindset was involuntarily changing.
Luckily, they didn’t find any traitors today.
Ke’s Spiritual Series Magic — Emotional Perception.
It can perceive the other’s emotions through physical contact, as long as the other hasn’t set up mental protection or disguises, they can’t escape Ke’s magic.
The groups they investigated today all seemed fine, Gray thought, perhaps the situation wasn’t as dire as he previously thought, the increase in mycelium inside the city might be the last madness of a few traitors.
With the task complete, Gray patted the seemingly tired Ke on the shoulder: "Get some rest, see you tomorrow."
After Gray left, Ke didn’t return to his accommodation.
Instead, he wandered towards a corner of the city.
Along the way, he encountered several parasitized individuals, but none came out to trouble Ke.
Eventually, Ke arrived at a corner of the city wall, on a small patch of undiscovered fungal mat, and collapsed on it with a "thud."
"I... I have followed your instructions and let those traitors go... Can you really... really help me?"
From within the fungal network, a voice responded to him:
"Traitors? You say they’re traitors, then what are you?"
"Everyone just wants to live well, the real traitors are those Empire nobles who take the parasitized as cannon fodder! You and those parasitized individuals are just pitiable victims."
"As for helping you... Of course, I’m the future bearer of integrity and virtue!"
Ke felt the fungal mat beneath him suddenly became active, the mycelium grew longer, slowly connecting to his body.
He instinctively wanted to retreat but gritted his teeth and remained still.
Ke felt magic power flowing into him through the mycelium, bringing him some sort of change.
He opened his clothes and looked at his chest.
As his will dictated, the mycelium on his skin gradually disappeared, replaced by healthy and clean skin.
This scene felt familiar to Ke: "Is this... mimicry disguise? You’ve... granted me skills?!"
Unconsciously, Ke used the term "granted," as in his view, bestowing skills was close to divine methods.
Although he wasn’t a believer in this unknown entity, indicating significant differences, he was still fearful.
"Don’t worry, even if the city changes ownership later, you’ll remain safe, as long as you’re not foolish enough to report things."
"Oh, by the way, you can call me ’Boss’ from now on!"
After saying this, the voice disappeared.
"Boss..." Ke muttered the title, recalling the previous bald vampire’s odd behavior regarding this term, gaining some clarity.
As for immediately reporting up?
During today’s identification, with so many liars, it’s clear the proportion of traitors is quite high.
Has no one ever thought to report for merit?
For so long, the upper levels still know nothing about this "Boss," which already shows what trying to report would lead to, and Ke doesn’t want to die.
He simply felt a bit afraid, standing from the demon race’s perspective, he didn’t even know how to win this war?
Fortunately... he now had an alternative choice...
"Why is there a ship in that direction?"
The sudden appearance of the thought frightened Ke.
"Bo... Boss? What’s the matter?"
"Ah? Oh, sorry, forgot to disconnect communications." The voice disappeared again.
Ke was suspicious for a while, seeing the sun about to set, he hurriedly returned home.
...
Lin Jun discovered that if there weren’t any time constraints, she seemed to be able to easily turn one border city after another into mushroom form by simply spreading the fungal mat and subverting them.
Unfortunately, she really had a time constraint.
According to Feixi’s perspective, the Emperor is now putting all his focus on the Dragon Cliff Dungeon area.
Although it wasn’t stated publicly, Lin Jun could easily deduce with the information in hand that the Emperor intended to compete head-to-head with that Slime.
Lin Jun needed to take advantage of this window to swallow several northern city fortresses and re-transform them as her bridgeheads.
As for the Emperor and Demon King, the best-case scenario is one dies and another is severely wounded, allowing her to easily reap profit.
Unfortunately, Dragon Cliff Dungeon is located in the Empire’s center, Lin Jun couldn’t reach there now, otherwise, she’d definitely want to intervene.
For now, she could only focus on devouring the cake in front of her.
Little Pig had already prepared the army, thanks to the dwarf craftsmen, this time the soldiers were all clad in standard armor, several combat puppets also accompany them.
As soon as the dwarves make a move, the army will head south, launching a two-sided attack, taking the first step to color the map.
However, at this critical moment, a ship appeared on the sea.
It passed through the fluorescent mushrooms spreading from the Tide Sanctuary, heading towards the United Kingdom.
And its direction came from the Archipelago that should have been swallowed by the mist, Lin Jun thought the people on the Archipelago were already completely wiped out.
Not only that, but there was also an acquaintance on the ship.
...
"It’s really beautiful!" a crew member leaned on the ship’s railing, looking at the fluorescence mushrooms covering the ocean below.
Not noticeable during the day, at nightfall, the boat appeared to sail through a galaxy.
She called towards the captain’s cabin behind her: "Lady Bella, won’t you come out to see? It’s truly beautiful."
A somewhat weak voice responded: "No, call me when there are bugs trying to board..."
Inside the captain’s cabin, Bella, who had already vomited once during the day, leaned against the chair, trying hard to expel the chaos color from her mind.
While not using [Realm of Truth] prevents direct visual impact, having seen the essence of those fluorescence mushrooms, Bella could no longer deceive herself into ignoring this.
However, fortunately, it was only this sea area, once ashore, she wouldn’t need to care.
This time, she came carrying the mission given by Lady Sofia, and...
She looked towards the east, murmuring: "Father... are you alright?"